womanhood and identity

I admit I don't know much of gendered love as I was not raised around or by men. My family is all women. Myself, my mother, my aunt, and my grandmother, all on my mother's side. When bell hooks writes about the men in her family, I can only understand the words as is and can't relate to the experiences behind them. When she speaks of the wounded child in a girl who is taught not to be herself, I wonder if this is what I learned.

I think honesty has been pressed into the marrow of my bones, because I have never been able to exist as anything but myself for a single second. Growing up, I felt like there was nobody like me. Nobody looked like me, especially not my mother. My classmates had two alive parents and didn't live in government housing and couldn't keep up with my reading level. A million things marked me as unusual. It's different from being alone, but it's lonely to learn you're one of a kind. In a world of love, I would not be lonely at all. In this world, I am thankful to have others committed to a loving life.